Neither side wants to talk about where, exactly, they’re going to find the money to pay for any of it.

Everyone agrees, though, that both the public-employee pension system, which covers 770,000 current and retired workers, and the state’s transportation system, which includes everything from roads and bridges to the rails, need an infusion of cash — something New Jersey doesn’t have much of right now. Fixing them could require hard choices, including the possibility of tax increases and deeper spending cuts in other areas.

New Jersey’s pension system, currently worth $80 billion, is a long-term issue. The system has enough money to pay out benefits for several decades, but it is also underfunded by roughly $40 billion. And that means the overall health of state finances could be in jeopardy for years to come if leaders can’t identify a way to cover the benefits going forward — or reduce them, as Christie has suggested.

But the pension system is also an immediate concern because the annual state contribution that financial experts say is needed to sustain it is $4 billion.

Finding money for transportation projects is also an immediate challenge. The pot of money used to pay for those projects is perilously low, with all of the revenue generated by New Jersey’s gasoline tax — the primary funding source — now going to pay off existing debt. The state is also running out of borrowed money that has been earmarked for transportation projects.

If the state doesn’t figure out a way to come up with $1.6 billion — the annual cost of repairs and maintenance over the last five years — New Jersey will likely have to significantly scale back the work as early as 2015.

Christie, a Republican who is considering a run for the presidency, has been emphasizing employee benefit reform since the beginning of the year as he’s tried to regain footing in the wake of the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal. But unlike 2011, when he put forward an ambitious reform plan and eventually struck a deal with Democrats to enact major changes in benefits, this year he has yet to say exactly what needs to be done.

Instead, he impaneled a commission of experts to make recommendations, with a preliminary report expected later this month.

“We have a pension and health benefit reform commission that is working now to come out with some initial evaluation of the depth of the situation and then with some ideas and recommendations about how we can improve,” Christie said last week during a public appearance in Sea Bright.

“I think that will be a major topic of discussion come the fall,” he said.

So far, however, Democrats have shown no appetite for more reforms. They’re still upset with Christie for going back on his promise, struck in 2010, to beef up the state’s contributions to the pension system; citing a budget shortfall, he cut the contributions by $2.4 billion over two fiscal years.

Instead, just as Christie has held a series of events this summer to highlight the pension troubles, Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, has begun to tour the state to bring more attention to the transportation funding issue.

Speaking last week at the foot of a more than 100-year-old bridge in Roselle that is rated “structurally deficient,” Sweeney said maintenance of the transportation system, including the nearly 70 percent of roadways ranked by engineers to be in either poor or mediocre condition, has to be a top priority.

“When bridges like this go out, it has an enormous impact on the community, on commerce,” Sweeney said. “We take for granted going over that bridge, that it’s safe.

“We have many, many bridges in the state that are like that,” he said.

Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, D-Secaucus, has also promised to hold legislative hearings that will explore funding options as well as look at how the condition of the transportation infrastructure affects the economy and jobs.

“I think this is a pressing issue, something that we have to take care of,” Prieto said in an interview.

Lawmakers expect the administration to come before them eventually to ask for permission to borrow more to shore up the Transportation Trust Fund, but Department of Treasury spokesman Chris Santarelli would not confirm that any such plan exists when asked by The Record last week.

The administration “is still evaluating all of its options,” Santarelli said.

“We are not in a position to comment further at this time,” he said.

Borrowing more money would likely come at a higher cost because New Jersey’s credit rating was lowered earlier this year by all three major Wall Street ratings agencies in response to recent budget woes and other fiscal problems, including the pension system.

Transportation advocates say an increase in New Jersey’s 10.5-cents-per-gallon gas tax, which hasn’t been raised in over two decades, seems like a more logical funding alternative.

New Jersey, which also levies a 4-cents-per-gallon gross receipts tax on petroleum refiners and distributors, has the second-lowest gas tax in the country, according to the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan organization based in Washington, D.C.

“The first thing New Jersey needs to do for money is to bump up that tax. It may not be palatable today politically, but it is an area that needs to be explored,” said Richard E. Barone, director of transportation programs for the Regional Plan Association, a non-profit group that focuses on transportation and infrastructure planning in the metropolitan area.